


Adventures in Babysitting

by travels_in_time



Category: Sherlock (BBC)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-09
Updated: 2010-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-12 13:25:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/125342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/travels_in_time/pseuds/travels_in_time
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eleven-year-old Greg unexpectedly winds up watching a room full of unruly children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adventures in Babysitting

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Непростое задание](https://archiveofourown.org/works/625085) by [sKarEd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sKarEd/pseuds/sKarEd)



> Inspired by Sadyna's art [here](http://sadynax.livejournal.com/17145.html).

Greg looked around the room cautiously. There were three babies, two toddlers, and one small child who marched up to him immediately and looked him up and down skeptically. "You're not our regular sitter," the boy announced.

"No, Mrs. Hudson's running late. I'm just here for a bit. My name's Greg, what's yours?"

The boy drew himself up to his full height, which was about three and a half feet. "Mycroft."

"That's a mouthful. How 'bout I call you Mike?" Greg reached out to ruffle the boy's hair, but the boy pulled back and stared at him haughtily.

" _Mycroft_ ," he insisted. "How old are you? You don't look old enough to take care of us."

"I'm eleven. I have three younger brothers, I think I can manage you lot for a few hours."

Mycroft was still examining him carefully. Greg wondered if he was about to ask for ID or perhaps references, but instead he asked, "Would you like me to introduce the others to you?"

How old was this kid, anyway? He looked no more than four or five, but he talked like a dictionary. "Sure, go ahead."

Mycroft led him over to the toddlers, who were playing in one corner of the room. "This is Sally, and this is Andy. They don't play very well with the others." The two children looked up at Greg, dismissed him as uninteresting, and went back to their game, which apparently involved toy police cars. Andy was making the siren noises.

One of the babies was sitting alone, chewing on a stuffed phone. "This is--well, today I'm calling her Anthea." Mycroft paused a moment. "I don't actually know what her name is. She doesn't talk very much."

The baby didn't even glance at them, absorbed in the phone. Greg tried not to laugh. "She's a baby. I don't think any of them talk much."

Mycroft gave him a pitying glance. "You just have to be able to understand them."

He led Greg to the corner where the last two babies were sitting. The blond one was sitting, that was, and trying to stack some blocks on top of each other. The other, a dark-haired one with a frankly ridiculous mass of curls--someone's Mum was far too sentimental, Greg thought--was lying on his tummy and inspecting the stack. Every time it would get higher than three blocks, he would grab the bottom block. The stack would tumble over, the blond baby would patiently try to rebuild it, and the dark-haired one would examine the block he'd taken intently, as if not even noticing the chaos he was creating.

"This is my brother Sherlock," Mycroft announced, gesturing at the dark-haired child. "He's a genius. And _don't_ call him Shirley." He glared up at Greg warningly.

"Wasn't going to," Greg retorted. Sherlock didn't look like a genius. He looked like a troublemaker. Greg was rather surprised that the other baby hadn't burst into tears yet over the continued destruction of his block tower.

Greg squatted down beside the pair. "Maybe you should go play somewhere else for a while," he suggested to the blond baby. "We can leave these blocks for Sherlock and find you something else to do."

He picked up the baby, who went stiff in his arms. Greg knew what that meant, had seen it often enough with his brothers. But to his surprise, the baby didn't start screaming, just leaned back and watched Greg warily.

"Hi," Greg said to him. "I didn't mean to scare you. I just thought you might like to play someplace where the kids are a little more friendly."

There was a sudden pressure on his foot. He looked down. Sherlock had attached himself to Greg's leg, yanking insistently on his trousers, frowning up at him.

"He wants you to put John down," Mycroft explained, rather unnecessarily, Greg thought. "They don't do well when they're separated."

He looked at the baby he held--John. "You want down?" John leaned over precariously, reaching for Sherlock, and Greg caught him. "Okay, okay, go play with your friend." He put John back on the floor. Sherlock lost interest in Greg immediately, crawled over to John, and handed him a block.

"Who do you play with?" Greg asked Mycroft. There didn't seem to be any other children his age.

Mycroft gave him a faintly superior look. "I don't _play_. I help supervise."

Greg couldn't keep from laughing. "I bet you do."

But he wasn't really surprised later, watching as Mycroft made his rounds, stopping to chat with Sally and Andy, who now seemed to be playing house; holding a one-sided conversation with Anthea, who hadn't let go of her toy phone once that Greg had seen; and finally attempting to help Sherlock, who'd gotten hold of a block-sorter and was attempting to shove a star-shaped block into a square hole.

"Oh, really, Sherlock, no one would know that you're supposed to be the clever one," Mycroft was saying in annoyance. "Even John could figure this out."

 _Thwack_. A rubber suction cup dart had appeared on his forehead.

Mycroft sighed. "Senseless violence, John? Really?"

Greg looked at the babies. Sherlock was laughing; John was gazing innocently off in the distance and attempting to hide something behind his back.

"Don't make me take that away from you," Greg said sternly. John gave him a mutinous look. "I mean it," Greg warned him. "Any more shooting people, and you're going in the playpen."

******************

An hour later, Greg had had just about enough. Sally and Andy had had some elaborate scenario going on, involving several toy police cars and a couple of Lego houses. Sherlock had crawled through and rearranged everything, despite their screams of fury. Then, apparently in a fit of scientific enquiry, he'd ripped the stuffing out of Anthea's toy phone. Her ensuing wails hadn't stopped until Mycroft had produced a Barbie laptop for her to play with. She was tapping away on it now, still sniffling, curled up in a corner and keeping a wary eye out.

Greg had consigned Sherlock to the playpen in disgrace. Sally and Andy had jeered and thrown blocks into the playpen. Sherlock, ignoring their teasing, busied himself with the blocks. Greg steered Sally and Andy back to the corner with the toy kitchen, where they got into an argument over who was going to cook--"You're the girl, you have to make dinner!" "I'm going to work, you do it!"--only to find, when he looked around, that Sherlock was staging a jailbreak, climbing up Greg's scarf that John had lowered into the playpen. As Greg watched, Sherlock balanced on the edge of the playpen, teetering precariously.

"Oh, for--" Greg said in exasperation, and lunged to catch him. "Not so fast, you little escape artist." He lowered Sherlock back into the playpen. "You cause too much trouble."

 _Thwack._ He looked down at himself. One of the rubber suction cup darts was stuck to his chest. John sat on the floor glaring defiantly, the gun in one hand, the end of the scarf in the other.

Greg decided to play along, clutching his chest, falling over and moaning. "Oh, no, you hit me! I'm dead!"

After a moment, he felt the dart being pulled off. He cracked his eyes open, just a bit. John had crawled over to him and was poking around with his scarf, a worried look on his face. It took Greg a moment to realize that John was trying to wrap up the "wound" with the scarf.

"Hang on," he objected, sitting up. John looked delighted. "You can't shoot people and then try to fix them. It doesn't work that way."

Sherlock banged on the floor of the playpen. As Greg looked over at him, he pointed to the blocks he'd been playing with. Greg squinted. The blocks were arranged to spell out "W-R-O-N-G".

Mycroft smirked at the look on Greg's face. "I did tell you he was a genius," he said smugly.

****************

At naptime, Mycroft volunteered to read to Anthea. Sally and Andy had refused to listen to Mycroft, whining for Greg to read to them instead. They fell asleep halfway through, and he had a mild moment of panic when he looked around and didn't immediately see the other two. Mycroft looked up from his book--Anthea was nearly asleep as well, her eyelids drooping and her head pillowed on a stuffed bear, still clutching the laptop--and pointed to the sofa.

Greg found John and Sherlock asleep behind the sofa, curled up together under a hideous orange blanket. They looked so content, he decided to leave them there. He had a feeling that the current peace and quiet wouldn't last very long once Sherlock was awake again.


End file.
